The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi. Email, olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com
My late father was a carpenter and a subsistent farmer, so I grew up in the village and tilled the land. For that reason, whenever any of those “A for Apple” school products talks about rural farming, I pay considerable attention. Yet the more the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, “blows grammar” on this his multi-billion Naira cell phone project, the more I fail to understand what his real motivation is. Now that he has told Nigerians, right inside Aso Villa (where else?) that he doesn’t give a damn about how we feel on the issue, he can go ahead and procure his handsets. Of all that ails Nigerian farmers, how anybody would argue that doling out free handsets (that almost every Nigerian can afford) is the solution beats me.
Just last week, the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Gombe State Chapter, lamented the declining price of cotton in the market. The secretary of the association, Gambo Sarkin-Noma, said that a kilogramme of the commodity now costs between N70 and N75.
He therefore appealed to the federal government to intervene. He also called on the government to provide farmers with insecticides, fertilizers and other agricultural inputs to boost cotton production in the state. “We want government at all levels to double efforts during the 2013 farming season in assisting farmers as it will improve the economy,” Sarkin-Noma said.
For me, that is a real problem. With a tonne of cotton which used to cost about N200, 000 in the past now selling for between N75, 000 and N80,000, why would the farmers continue to plough their fields? The sad bit is that the challenge with cotton is almost similar to that of many agricultural products in our country today and the subsistent farmers are the worse for it. To the extent that information has become an important factor of production, it is commendable that the minister is providing information for farmers but I refuse to buy his arguments for the procurement of handsets. If farmers know that they can get productive information from government, they will buy their own handsets.
I have read the minister’s explanation to the whole controversy and I have two questions for him: If these rural “Facebook Farmers” cannot afford buying cell phones of their own, who is going to be paying for their air times? And for the umpteenth time, how much will this project cost since he has not told us the Americans and the Chinese are supplying these handsets free of charge?
I was in the village about three weeks ago for Christmas and none of our people (all of who are basically farmers) was aware of Dr. Adesina’s “e-wallet and electronic voucher” that have been delivering fertilizers, seedlings and farm implements, as he claims. Even if we agree with the minister that the farmers need phones, the question to ask is whether that is the most pressing of their needs. I may not know much about economics, but I recall being taught a topic called scale of preference. If we were to draw one for Nigerian farmers, would cell phone come tops?
¨The pertinent point which the minister ignores is that of misplaced priority. In his quiet moment, I hope Dr. Adesina, who most people agree has been doing well (and is generally regarded as one of the shining lights of this administration) can ask himself whether the billions he intends to spend cannot be deployed to something more worthwhile than free cell phones, most of which will, in any case, end up at Alaba international market!
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